IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018 - 96

tc spotlight

Aerial Robotics and
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
By Anibal Ollero, Kimon Valavanis, and Yangquan Chen

n the last decade, aerial robotics and
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
experienced significant growth from
a scientific and technological point of
view. Moreover, drones appear in the
media almost daily and are becoming a
suitable alternative to help humans in
many complex tasks and applications
such as cinematography, surveillance,
environment monitoring, search and
rescue, agriculture, transportation, and
even inspection and manufacturing, in
addition to the military applications
that have dominated practical UAV
functions until recently.
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee
(RAS-TC) has contributed to promoting the emergence of new concepts
and technologies as well as new applications. It has also provided services
such as the assessment of regulations
for development, which play an important role in the consolidation of
the applications.
The committee received the award
for the Most Active IEEE Robotics and
Automation Society at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA) in 2016.

Aerial Robotic Systems Physically
Interacting with the Environment
This interest group focuses on the
methods and technologies required for
the development of aerial robots physically interacting with objects and with
other aerial vehicles. Aerial robotic
manipulation is a main subject of this
interest group (Figure 2).
Perception-Based Aerial Robotics
This interest group focuses on aerial
robots with onboard intelligence and

(a)

perception that allow positioning,
simultaneous localization and mapping,
navigation, object recognition, and tracking with limited power and computational capabilities (Figure 3).
Activities
Over the past several years, the Aerial
Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Systems RAS-TC has consolidated its
growth and the services provided to the
community, while concurrently promoting innovation.

(b)

Figure 1. (a) The autonomous landing of fixed-wing UAVs on mobile platforms,
demonstrated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the European FP7
EC-SAFEMOBIL project. (b) The University of Denver robots.

Research and Development
The RAS-TC recently defined three
interest groups.
Unmanned Aerial Systems
This interest group emphasizes UAVs
from large platforms to small vehicles as
well as a wide variety of systems and
applications (Figure 1).

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2018.2873445
Date of publication: 12 December 2018

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. Aerial manipulators developed in the H2020 AEROARMS project. (a) The
AEROX system developed by the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies, being
used for a contact inspection (pipe-wall depth measurement using an ultrasonic sensor).
(b) The Long Reach dual-arm manipulator, developed by the University of Seville,
transporting a bar that is executing a planned trajectory.

december 2018

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018

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